Frequent Miler on the Air - Highlights and lowlights from the Last Minute Travel Challenge | Coffee Break Ep14 | 6-11-24

Episode Date: June 11, 2024

Greg and Nick are busy returning home from a jam-packed week competing in our 2024 annual team challenge "Flying by the Seat of our Points". For this coffee break episode, we've highlighted a portion of the final livestream from Kuala Lumpur where the team reflects on the highlights (and lowlights) of their individual journeys. You can find out all kinds of details about this challenge here: https://frequentmiler.com/2024-annual-challenge/

Here we go. This is not your typical Frequent Miler on the Air episode. This is a standalone segment we're calling Coffee Break. Each Coffee Break segment will cover a single topic related to miles and points. And each Coffee Break is limited to 20 minutes or your money back. Enjoy. For today's Coffee Break episode, we've clipped out a few highlights from last night's live stream where we met up with our travelers in Kuala Lumpur and we announced our winner of the 2024 Frequent Miler Annual Travel Challenge, Flying by the Seat of Our Points points i'm sure we'll have lots

of discussion yet to come about all the things the guys learned from this last minute travel challenge uh but in this particular episode we're going to talk about their highlights and low lights from the trip uh what did they feel the best about and what did they feel the worst about during their trip uh give it a listen so g Greg, what was your highlight of the trip and then low light of the trip for booking specifically? For booking specifically, I'd say my highlight was finding the KLM business class flight from Vancouver to Zagreb, Croatia, uh, with that briefly over in Amsterdam. Um, because not only was, you know, it seemed desperate, like from LA trying to find something and to get something that perfect was amazing. And then because it also positioned me so well for the onward flight that I, you know, I literally just had the one stop to get here to Kuala Lumpur because I was so well positioned.

So I'd say that was the highlight of my booking. Yeah. Low light was the other one. Yeah. it was the other one yeah okay so my low light of booking i'd say was my plan to use a gift card from capital one shopping to book a hotel um because that gift card didn't come in time so i didn't use that to book the hotel and you're just sitting there being like i can't believe that was your worst part yeah Yeah, I was very lucky. Booking flights was such a piece of cake on this trip.

Oh, man. Love it in a little bit more. Yeah, all right. I didn't try to do Avianca Life Miles, and I think both guys are jealous that I did not try to do that. No, I'm thankful. On your behalf, I'm thankful for you. Yeah, someone had to avoid it.

All right, Nick, highlight and lowlight for bookings. Okay, highlight is the flight home. Fair. Which even that I couldn't do by myself, by the way. I had to call player two in it and she to call uh to get that completed for me so uh so maybe that's why it's the highlight because i didn't even have to deal with the hardest parts of it uh so i know nothing was particularly easy so and nothing really went the way i wanted it to so like it's hard to pick no highlight on the way here yeah uh

how about your bottom five um is there a particular low light yeah I think well uh life miles yeah life miles was really challenging and annoying so the so I I had a number of problems with LifeMiles. First was that the miles didn't transfer instantly. They showed up. Well, first of all, I went to transfer them right after buying the LifeMiles Plus subscription. I transferred miles to LifeMiles. And then I went to go book and LifeMiles site went down for maintenance.

So like two minutes after I bought the subscription the site was gone like so that was frustrating and then finally when it came back up the miles still as of now this morning and this was transfer on what friday i guess uh they still haven't shown up in my avianca account so uh so that was really annoying because i had something great that i wanted to book and couldn't so that would uh from a booking standpoint, be, I think, the biggest trouble. And then when I finally decided, OK, you know what? We'll do it with Player Two's Miles, and I'll transfer to her account and book through hers. They did post instantly in her Avianca Life Miles account.

So I was like, we're good to go. Went through and booked it. And as Tim mentioned, first payment method failed. Second payment method failed. Tried one card after another, after another. They all failed. Eventually, I had to call home and say, hey, I need you to call Avianca Life Miles for me because it was booked out of my wife's account.

And so I had to walk her through that. We had to sit on hold with Avianca and then eventually come to find out that the hold was lost and we couldn't book that. So I had a whole list of snafus and that's only part of it still so uh but from a flight standpoint it was that marrakesh to frankfurt it was a 1 20 a.m departure for a three-hour flight uh so sleeping just over two hours yeah that was that was not fun at least your sleep bank was super full at that point, right? Right, right. He didn't even need it.

We're just so happy that Nick made it here. Right. That is an achievement. All right, Tim, highlight and low light for bookings. Well, first of all, let me say that everybody should be on the lookout for the next week's frequent miler on the air episode called learning to hate life miles. It'll be a terrific, it'll be a terrific show. Um, so highlight, you know, and this is, this is, we were talking about this last night. It's sort of, it's not the flashiest by any means, but I think probably my highlight was the just little Alaska regional flight that I booked to start off with British Airways Avios. Wow. Partially because it was great value. It was so much cheaper

than everything else. And I didn't know for sure before that whether my Alaska benefits would transfer to that award redemption in the way that I had hoped. But if it did, I would get the exact literal seat that I was looking for on that flight, right? And so it was just cool that it was the one thing that it worked exactly the way I wanted it to from beginning to end. And it gave me, and that's actually a good learning point for me

because it gives me a lot of confidence now booking Alaska awards with Obvious and Obvious is the cheapest option because I know that my benefits are all my status benefits are all going to apply in exactly the way they would on Alaska when I'm booking an Alaska award, which is pretty cool. Um, so that was probably my highlight. My low light, you know, it's tough. Cause I mean, like Nick, both of my international bookings were, uh, I mean, they were a struggle.

And both of them, I found something that was really good fairly quickly. And then it was a struggle to get somebody to actually give it to me. But I would say that probably in retrospect, now that I know for sure that we came down here, it was the first night immediately finding terrific space to Zurich on Swiss Air. And then this perfect connecting flight to Bangkok that would work incredibly the whole way for 92,500 miles. Then to struggle for hours. Just to be clear, you're talking about you were going to use a 5,000 point stopover with Air Canada's program so that you'd stop over in Zurich and then move on to Bangkok, assuming that that would position you well for the next stage.

Right. And I could always toss it away if I needed to. And Bangkok is like really, really close. Really, really close. So it would have been perfect. Right. So effectively, it would have gone from instead of paying 70,000 points just to get to Zurich, I would have paid 92,500 points to get all the way to Bangkok with a stopover in Zurich. And then all I would have had to do is pay that little $95 cash fare to get from Bangkok to Kuala Lumpur, as it turned out. And to struggle with all the Swiss Air fandom space for literally hours. Transferred points to Aeroplan, transferred points to United.

I was trying to get this whole thing. And then to finally find that it's not there, then to only to get that Lufthansa space that I ended up flying and realized, oh, I can still do this. And then to call up and it's like, by now it's two o'clock in the morning, local or whatever and to hear that oh no aeroplane's closed now and you'll have to call back tomorrow after i would have needed to depart was like oh no it blows my mind that they're not 24 hours i know it's like like a program with so many international partners i can't imagine if

you're overseas somewhere in a place where you have a problem with your flight right you can't get a hold of somebody right if it's the middle of the night in canada like that's nuts to me yeah no i until that and that's actually another good learning point until that point i never realized that aeroplane closed it just assumed to me that there would be somebody manning the ship right yeah like but anyway so that was that was probably just in terms of like oh no that was probably the the low light yeah what would you if that had worked out i i was actually guessing at one point that our final destination would be northern south america i thought i when, when I, when we found out that

Europe was like our first thing, it occurred to me, Ooh, they might send us back for the, for the final one. And I thought that would have been really cool. What if that had happened? What if you had that onward flight to Bangkok, would you have taken it and then tried to get, I would have totally looked, I would have just seen what had better connections because South America to Europe is not neither Asia to South America or Europe to South America. looked i totally looked and i would just see what had better connections because south america to europe is neither asia to south america or europe to south america none of that's well connected yeah which is why i didn't think they were going to do it because stevens he's an efficient man but he's also a fair man and i didn't think that they would pick that they would send us back

because there's so few relative routes right right that's that's what i think but if it had happened if that had happened i would have totally looked to seeing. And if I could have found something that actually incorporated that at decent value, I totally would have taken that flight. Yeah. 100%. That would have been cool. I think one of the cool things from this challenge is seeing all the things that go wrong, not

because we're masochists over here, but because it is valuable to know, like, you know, when things don't go perfectly and all the things that are that people are interacting with in their own bookings. So thanks for sharing all that, everybody. But I do want to hear each of your highlight, your favorite activity real quick. Greg, favorite activity from the whole challenge? Yeah. Well, okay. I'm going to say that, well, shoot, it's so hard. Everything we did yesterday was a highlight.

The fishling, just because we laughed so hard. I mean, it's not something I would take my wife to but the other you wouldn't but the other two I would um uh maybe you would love it Mrs. Myler I'm gonna I'm gonna pick shoot tie it make it a tie it's a it's a it and sorry that that it's not a not a malays malaysia but it's a tie uh between uh nick's experience and tim's all right all right uh nick how about you so wait we're picking favorite from just the ones here or from the entire from the whole trip from the entire yeah any yeah um activity experience highlight activity 1 30 a.m flight right uh for me i think it'd be dinner at

the place that i went in morocco the uh the live jazz music was cool it was just a three-piece band but it was very cool they were very good they played a good variety of stuff and uh and the food was delicious it was so big so that i ordered the chicken and tagine and i ordered one appetizer and the menu had said you should probably order like two or three of the appetizers per person but i explained him and order this chicken tagine like is one enough and she's like well one's probably enough she was a little hesitant and so i had the one appetizer and then that to jean opened up and i saw how much chicken was in there and i was like well i didn't need an appetizer at all i felt like i ate my face off like i wanted

and and it looked like i hadn't eaten anything and i didn't want to leave any of it there so i kept eating and eating and eating until i was so uncomfortable. And, uh, but it was delicious. It was so good. So that was fun. The service was really good. I had a reservation at nine 30. So I sat at nine 30 and at 1150, she asked if I'd like to order dessert. And I was like, no, I need to get some sleep and book my way to Kuala Lumpur. So, uh, so I couldn't even stay for dessert. I said, I, but I, I thought about it for a second. I said, I really want it because everything has been so delicious, but, uh, but yeah, so that, that was probably my favorite. Nice. That, that did look really legit. Um, all right, Tim of your activities, highlight.

Definitely the fish, um, cute fish spa. That would be one that i would think about for sure yeah the um you know it would be uh i i i enjoyed that durian experience like if i took all the activities as just a straight experience it would probably be the batu caves if i was in putting next it's just because i've always wanted to see him and it was like it was cool to actually be there if i'm picking from just mine it would be neck the Batu Caves if I was putting next to it. It's just because I've always wanted to see them and it was like it was cool to actually be there. If I'm picking from just mine, it would be neck and neck between the durian tasting. And that was also fun because we got to do it together.

And so it's just fun to... I had to pick from something we did together because it's so much more fun. Getting my feet eaten by myself, by cannibal fish, would have been... Yeah, not as... Not as fun. not as fun not as fun

but the uh but you know i really had a and i also i had a blast and it wasn't really the challenge it wasn't but it was kind of the way i just kind of tried to gussy up the challenge uh going down the california coast and like stopping for the beach walks and doing all of the, all of the, getting the food from all the different places. Like that was just an awesome day. Like that was just a fun day.

So I'm going to tie too. I should have said that my favorite experience was how easy it was to book flights during this trip. Nice, nice. Cruel, cruel. My favorite experience was how easy it was to book flights during this trip. Nice. Nice. Cruel. Cruel. So question for each of you, one at a time.

Do you wish you had more time in each location that you went? And put another way, would you go back, I guess? Sure. Yes. Starting with Greg. To L.A., probably not. But for I probably will, though. But yeah, absolutely.

I'd love I'd love to go back to Croatia to enter Zagreb even even though I I'm more interested in. I want to see Dubrovnik and Split and so on. But Zagreb was great. And and Malaysia, I mean mean we've just touched the surface really so i definitely want to come back to both yeah yeah i mean i think it's hard to say no to either of those like of course of course it would be great to have more time uh to see more things and and yeah i mean we were people who love to travel so i feel like it's hard to throw a place at us that we wouldn't be interested in going back to, to see something different about.

Yeah, absolutely. And like Nick, Nick always says every year that like none of us would actually choose to do this trip on our own. Right. We just do, we do these for fun and to show various possibilities and things, but we would absolutely want to stay at each of these destinations far longer than we have. Yeah. All right. Two more questions. This one's for Nick. Sorry to do this to you, Nick. Do you regret Chicago? You know, I regret Chicago. No. Do I wish I could have found a flight to New York that night?

Yes. And actually, in hindsight, what I think probably went wrong, I didn't see anything available. So the reason this question is coming up is because if I had stayed overnight in L.A., well, first of all, if I had stayed overnight in LA, it wouldn't have worked, but getting to Morocco was tough because I was in Chicago and I couldn't get to New York in time for the New York to Morocco flight. And then I had a hard time finding other stuff. Do I regret choosing Chicago? Not really because I was a short flight from Dallas or I could have gotten to New York or Boston or DC or other places. I just couldn't find available flights. If I could have gotten to New York, then it would have been a totally different experience because I would have been in Morocco way earlier than I was and with a lot simpler routing. So would I have preferred that? Yes. Now, here's the tip that is going to seem

very intuitive to many of you, but to those of us that live on the East Coast, maybe not. I didn't see any availability on Los Angeles to New York flights that night. I think what was probably the problem was that my clock's computer was past midnight already. Computer's clock. My computer's clock. Well, you know, either way. Either way. The clock on my computer was set on Eastern time so i think like i there were some programs where i wasn't able to search for availability on the correct date uh because

not because there was nothing available but because the time wasn't so yeah once i set it back to west coast time then i was able to find more stuff than i had found initially so i think i probably missed some that is a wild he realized this on the way to the airport on the way to the airport so he already booked a chic He realized this on the way to the airport. On the way to the airport. That is a wild error. So he had already booked a Chicago flight, was on the way to the airport, and then was like, oh, I wonder. Yeah. Yeah. That could have changed the whole challenge.

Because if you got to Morocco sooner, you could have left Morocco sooner. And if you got in early, you could have taken an Air France flight out Saturday morning. Right. Right. Yeah. Wow. Far different than it was. Here I was feeling guilty for sending you to Morocco.

So it's really time zone, time zone's fault that Nick lost. It's the clock's computer's fault.